Lawmakers Want Baseball Chiefs to Clear Up Congressional Testimony

WASHINGTON – The chairman and ranking Republican member of the House Oversight Committee are asking Major League Baseball officials some tough questions about whether its drug policy was as tough as they said it was.

The duo of Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Tom Davis, R-Va., on Thursday penned letters to Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and Players Association Head Don Fehr asking them to clarify discrepancies in testimony before Congress in 2005 and allegations made in the a report that documented the use of performance-enhancing drugs in the national pastime.

The committee says the MLB and the players testified in 2005 that its drug testing policies were working.

However, the committee says the Mitchell Report, named for former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, who conducted the investigation, suggests that a random drug testing regime was suspended in 2004 and players were notified ahead of time when they were going to be tested.

Waxman and Davis want Selig and Fehr to "rectify apparent discrepancies" between the testimony and the Mitchell Report over the possible suspension of the drug testing program in 2004.

Moreover, they want to know if the program was suspended, why it was declared "a success" at the 2005 hearing.

"Was the MLB steroid testing program suspended during the 2004 season? What provision of the collective bargaining agreement was invoked in order to begin this suspension? If the program was suspended, why did MLB fail to inform Congress of this suspension during the 2005 hearing, or at any time thereafter?" they ask in a series of questions.

Davis chaired the now infamous 2005 hearing, since the GOP controlled the House at the time.